mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

More To Come?

Dan Samuelson

Michigan's big recruiting weekend delivered as expected, with Cass Tech teammates David Dawson and Delano Hill becoming the 23rd and 24th members of the class of 2013. Dawson is very much a known commodity, Hill less so—Josh Helmholdt caught up to the latter to get some clarity on his future position ($):

"Their plans for me are I am going to start off playing corner," Hill said. "If I don't like playing corner, I can always go back to playing safety. I think I can play all positions in the secondary, so it doesn't matter to me."

Hill played safety in high school but has also displayed impressive cover skills on the camp circuit; at 6'1", he'd give Michigan a bigger corner to line up on the outside.

The Wolverines hosted a surprise visitor last weekend in IN OL Dan Samuelson, a Nebraska commit who recently received a Michigan offer, per Allen Trieu ($). While Samuelson played it coy about his interest in Michigan, a Scout article from last week indicates that he took a big step by making this visit ($) [emphasis mine]:

“I truly didn’t go and look for another offer though. [Michigan] came to me. There is very little interest from me to Michigan. I really don’t think that I will take a visit there. Nebraska said that they would view that as a decommitment. I don’t want to do that. I believe that is where that will stay.”

I doubt the situation changed from Nebraska's end in the span of a few days; it seems likely that Samuelson has given up his spot in their class to see Ann Arbor. And now, 247's Todd Worly reported today that Samuelson's situation could be resolved imminently ($):

Looks like the Wolverines have made an impression and Samuelson plans on having everything figured out by Monday evening.

"I'm going to start calling everyone around 5 (p.m. EST), after I talk to Nebraska and figure things out with them," Samuelson said.

With the recent rumblings that Michigan could take a sixth offensive lineman, plus the above chronology, well... stay tuned.

Michigan also made an impression on another visitor committed to a Big Ten school, linebacker recruit and Wisconsin pledge Marcus Ball. Ball told Todd Worly that Michigan is "a great place," though he's waiting to see who the Badgers hire to replace Bret Bielema before making any decisions about his status with the Badgers ($). For what it's worth, Dymonte Thomas—one of many Michigan commits taking his official visit last weekend—tells Sam Webb that he thinks Ball will make the switch ($):

“I just met [Ball] this weekend, but I think he is going to commit to Michigan too,” said Thomas. “I’m not 100% sure, but I think he really liked us. We’ll see what happens.”

Man, Bielema is going to flip out about that gentleman's agree-- oh, right.

[Hit THE JUMP for the latest on Laquon Treadwell and more.]

The Inevitable Happened

With National Signing Day drawing closer, Treadwell has continued to pare his list. Michigan was listed in his top four in recent weeks, but Treadwell said the Wolverines have been eliminated and he is down to three schools. Oklahoma State remains in the mix and the Cowboys are set to receive his next official visit.

"Oklahoma State (will receive a visit) for sure, but that's about it," Treadwell said. "I think that is going to be Jan. 11th."

While it's certainly disappointing that Michigan won't land Treadwell, at least now we can finally move on from his recruitment...

CA OL Cameron Hunt, a Cal commit, is now hearing from Ohio State in addition to Michigan and considering an official visit to Columbus ($). This quote is destined for the pages of my upcoming book College Football Recruiting And The Malleability Of The Word 'Commitment':

"I don't know if [Cal is] my leader anymore. I'm just looking at every school. They're definitely not out of the competition. I do consider myself committed but I do feel like it's opened up a lot."

I'm committed to writing that book, but it currently trails "taking a nap and never writing a book" on my to-do list leaderboard. An official visit to my couch is planned for 3 pm.

2014 GA OL Orlando Brown Jr. named Michigan to his early top eight along with Oregon, South Carolina, Alabama, Iowa, Ohio State, Florida, and Georgia (in no particular order).

Comment viewing options

It appears they want 1 more OL in the class- is it a matter of which kid offered will commit first- or will they wait to hear back from a certain prospect first? Are Hunt and Samuelson the two most likely?

Hunt and Samuelson are both headed for guard, in my opinion, so I don't think Michigan would take both. If Samuelson is deciding tonight, then Hunt might not even get a chance to take that visit he was planning for January.

Most indications suggest that Taylor Lewan is leaving after this season. So I don't think the coaches would have a hard time selling the guys on "Hey, this scholarship is opening up for a guy who's going to get picked in the first round, so we need another lineman." They couldn't really have known that Lewan would be a top 10/15 pick when all those kids committed in February.

This class was originally something like 17 or 18, I think. Now it's at 24 and counting. Things change.

IIRC, Chris Fox reportedly wavered for a bit on his commitment after David Dawson tweeted about getting a 6th OL commit. I can't remember the kids name, but he was a twitter friend of Dawson's and a 4* recruit.

It is difficult to know what is going on with recruiting, and now with the coaches throwing offers around like stocking stuffers, I wouldn't be surprised by too much anything.

If they brought in 5 2013 linemen and redshirted them all in 2013 with Lewan still in the fray, it would make sense that a 2013 OL might take umbrage with a 6th guy showing up.

HOWEVER -

with Lewan gone, if the coaching staff looks at one of the early enrolling O-linemen (say, Kyle Bosch), burns his redshirt, puts him in the 2-deep and on special teams, and essentially moves him into the Kalis/Magnuson/Braden/Bars class, Bosch essentially becomes Caleb Stacey's replacement in the 2012 class, and the staff can again take 5 OL (which they should every year due to attrition / numbers needed on the line).

I'm not sure how the Lewan situation really makes much of a difference since the 2013 class isn't "competing" with him. They will most likely all redshirt (if Kalis redshirts....almost everyone will).

From a 2013 perspective, the competition goes up by 20% if you go from 5 to 6 recruits. That's definitely something that a recruit would have to consider. It looks like all current recruits are more highly ranked (or more versatile) so they might not be too concerned with the addition.

Obviously, it's ultimately the coaches job to round out the roster as they see fit

The point is that if you allot, say, 15 scholarships for linemen and 1 leaves, then you want to "refill" and get back to having 15 linemen.

And yeah, that's fine if Lewan was projected to be a first rounder for a while, but anything could have happened between then and now. Lewan could have had a subpar season, he could have hurt his shoulder and missed a chunk of time, he could have come up just short of winning a national championship and wanted to come back for one more shot, etc.

I'm sure the coaches are not projecting their 2013 lineman depth based on Mel Kiper, Jr.'s Big Board - they're basing it off what they've heard from Lewan, his family, and NFL scouts.

This is sort of an odd statement, since the '12 kids have only been on campus for a few months, the '13 kids haven't signed their NLIs yet, and David Dawson literally JUST re-committed to Michigan about 48 hours ago.

If you want 3 QBs on your roster, you most certainly can bring in 3 in one class. Because it's almost certain that 1 of those guys will get booted off the team, transfer, or get injured. That's just the way things go. In fact, there's a very good chance that at least 2 of the 5 current commits won't make it to their third or fourth year. The only recruiting class Michigan's had where every lineman recruit completed his career at Michigan was the 2007 class...which included just David Molk and Mark Huyge. So if you take 6 guys, you're basically just trying to ensure that you'll have about 4 left by the time they're seniors.

Obviously, you don't want to take a class where you're going to have too many guys to even put on the field. You don't want 10 linemen or 8 linebackers in one class. But six isn't a stretch at all. Stanford took SEVEN linemen in the class of 2012, including a bunch of highly touted recruits (Andrus Peat, Kyle Murphy, Josh Garnett, etc.).

I caught most of Kugler's state championship game on TV Saturday after the WVU game, and dominate he did. At least on offense - he was bowling people over all game from his LT spot (though Coatesville's DL looked a bit undersized compared to NA's OL). He played DT too, and, well, looked very disinterested in anything more than basically absorbing a double team. Granted, NA's DEs were causing havoc all game for Coatesville's QB, so he didn't have to do much. I'm guessing he was trying to save some energy to keep up the offensive performance, as NA jumped out to a huge lead (it was 35-7 until Coatesville scored late in the 2nd quarter).

Now that I find out he's suffering from a torn labrum, it makes his beastly OL performance even more impressive.

According to Rivals, Samuelson doesn't really have a ton of offers, but the coaches must see something in him that they really like. They seem to be doing pretty well at identifying "diamond in the rough" kinds of recruits.

Plus, I'll always welcome more linemen into the fold. MANBALL.

Attention campers. Lunch is cancelled due to lack of hustle. Deal with it.

I know Tom has mentioned that all of the offensive linemen were told they would be taking five and that he had heard from one of them that he would be upset if they took a sixth. I'm kind of hoping that if they do land a sixth one it tends toward the Samuelson side of things where the guy isn't very highly rated so that the current commitments don't feel threatened. They all committed early (orginally at least), and they deserve to know what they're getting in to.

Hmm...I'd prefer that they not take another OL period and ensure that they don't "rock the boat" with any of the studs currently committed than take a "meh" OL recruit (I have no idea if Sameulson is "meh" or not, I am speaking to the general principle stated) and risk it. Personally, I think 5 OL a year is plenty and I actually am in favor of 4 OL per year every year rather than 6 one year, 3 another, then 5 and so on.

Taking 4 per year would make sense, but you have to remember what happened in 2010 and 2011. We only have1 OL from those 2 years on the roster right now and he is coming off an injury that kept him out the whole year.

Greetings from Bolivia.

"It's special how the real true people hang together. And if you don't support the program you're not a true Michigan guy. It's that simple." - Gary Moeller

College coaches generally want 15-ish linemen on the roster at any given time.

Including the 5 commits for the class of 2013 and Taylor Lewan, Michigan will have just 13 on the roster. Take away Lewan (which is likely) and you're down to 12. Taking a sixth lineman right now wouldn't even put us at the number that coaches want as the status quo.

Ace Anbender, a 6' 150 lb defensive back prospect from Ann Arbor, MI, in a MYSKETCHYRECRUITINGSITEBLOGPLACE exclusive, reports that he may now take a surprise official to the bathroom en route to the couch. Quotes and video here: shrt.lnk/86177